TROY -- In Elizabethan times, Shakespeare's works were traditionally performed by an all-male cast, with the small handful of female roles performed mostly by boys before their voices changed.

But for its second production of the season, the Theater Institute at Sage (TIS) is offering Shakespeare's comedy "Much Ado About Nothing" with a different twist. The production's bold concept has its own form of role reversal, using an all-female cast. It will open at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Schacht Fine Arts Center Theatre at The Sage Colleges in Troy, the former home of the New York State Theater Institute. The show will run through Feb. 19.

Two Sage alumni and NYSTI veterans, both from the class of 2007, have returned to play key roles in the production after having launched successful performing careers.

All the world has literally been Emily Curro's stage. She has toured a big chunk of the Midwest with one performing troupe, and also spent time performing halfway around the world with an English-language, Western-style theater troupe in China.

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Curro and classmate Alexandra Tarantelli, who has ventured as far as Kentucky as a performer since leaving Sage, have returned to share their experiences and knowledge with their younger peers at the college.

"This is a chance for the students to talk to us, learn what we've been through and find out about what it's like to be a performer," Curro said.

The play is a classic romantic comedy featuring two pairs of star-crossed lovers -- principally, Beatrice and Benedick, who cross verbal swords in a battle of the sexes.

Curro plays Benedick, "a jaunty kind of bachelor who spews out all these Shakespearean words about how he hates the idea of marriage and how he won't be made a husband and a fool, all the while falling for the quick-witted Beatrice," the actress said.

The onstage gender reversal has posed a challenge for the entire cast.

"We've had to do a fair amount of work on the voice and movement for the show," director David Baecker said. "We're not going to be fooling anyone, but we want the audience to adjust to the concept fairly quickly."

"In some ways, I think Shakespeare was in touch with the powerlessness of women in his day," he said. "When you talk about sexual politics in his plays, they typically run in one direction, but hearing these lines out of the mouths of a different gender, you tend to hear it differently. Some lines really ring out. It's funny how hearing women playing men mocking women changes the equation."